Fury

Views of a French village prelude the film and lead over to an interior space with a woman sitting at an open window. This classically composed 'view from a window' alternates with close-up shots of flies who swarm about among the kitchen utensils upon the table. Their fellow species-members are already stuck dead upon the fly swatter. The camera shows right up close the struggle for survival of the last twitching flies, whose oversized representation induces repugnance as well as a certain attraction. Both responses are effects of the quiet, contemplative images. The close-ups reveal even more about the seemingly inappropriate title: Fury is simply the brand of the insect trap.

Everyday life is the point of departure and also the contents of the work. The effect of the formal realization is the aestheticization of the everyday scenario as well as of the loathsome, morbid aspect. The flies' corpses and the sleeping woman call up associations of death which may be pursued further through the presence of iconographic set pieces such as the basket of fruit as a still life and vanitas motif. Among the references to cinematic practice is the visual »dissection of the moving picture into a sequence of individual images: The stillness of cinema at 24 frames per second«, comments the artist in reference to Godard´s remark: »Cinema is truth 24 times a second.« (Stefanie Zobel)